Union Bashing Won't Reform Our Schools

(And Neither Will Job Protectionism)

By Jennifer Goldstein

Educational and political leaders alike have been lining up to praise the efforts of District of Columbia Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee to significantly alter the rules governing tenure for teachers in Washington. The fanfare surrounding her proposal to let schools fire tenured teachers under certain circumstances reflects a tone growing more pervasive among those who seek to reform public education. At its core is the belief that it is somehow not possible to be proudly pro-teacher and also vehemently pro-student. This tone, and its related approach to school improvement, is misguided.

The fact is that many American school districts and their local teachers' unions have formed a symbiotic partnership in mediocrity. To single out one side of the equation (teachers' unions and their support for tenure) as the cause of the problem is to fail to recognize the role school administrators have played.

Let me be clear: Teachers who are not adequately serving children, and who do not improve when provided with support, need to be removed from teaching, and quickly. But in our woefully outdated and ineffective supervisory model for schools, administrators, not unions, hire teachers, and they, not the unions, are formally...